Of late, I've been thinking a lot in passing about how the concept of "anticapitalism" is used against social justice movements. Whether it's Louise Mensch on HIGNFY asking how the Occupy London protesters outside St Paul's can be anticapitalist if they're drinking Starbucks coffee, or claims that the Occupy Wall Street movement is a Jew-hating mob ( Read more... )

If you haven't seen the background on this story yet, check out The F-Word's coverage here. The background story of the rape in question is here. Neither of these sources is goes into extensive details about the assault/s, but obviously the subject matter is potentially upsetting, so please use your discretion ( Read more... )

I haven't written about the garden for a while, for a umber of reasons (that's another post for the near future), but I definitely thought it was worth sharing George Monbiot's Guardian article about the dangers of aminopyralid poisoning for organic gardeners. Worrying but essential knowledge:

Has-BeansThis does concern me. Argument for completely ( Read more... )

No Pig In Boots

Why can't we just have a 'Cute Animals' section?? Like 'Pet Of The Day'? Why must it all be EVILLLLL???

And how the hell did this make *more* people buy sausages? Does not compute.

I hate humans.

This entry was originally posted at http://nanaya.dreamwidth.org/356372.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

...who threw shit (including possibly a fire extinguisher) off the roof of 30 Millbank...

...please go die in a fire, you fucking knobjockeys, and stop diverting attention from a serious and important issue by doing stupid, dangerous crap which could injure or kill people.

This entry was originally posted at http://nanaya.dreamwidth.org/350682. ( Read more... )

The head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, has described torture as "illegal and abhorrent" and defended the service's need for secrecy.

He said his organisation faced "real, constant operational dilemmas" to avoid using intelligence which had been gathered by torture.

Good news unless you're in Uzbekistan, India, Saudi Arabia, etc etc etc etc.

This ( Read more... )

Check out today's email from 36 Degrees. Yes, I've signed the petition. I'd like to do more than just that, though, so suggestions from people with specific knowledge about this are very welcome.

The government is getting ready for a huge sell-off of our national forests to private firms. This could mean ancient woodlands are chopped down and ( Read more... )

Conservative plans strongly suggest a desire to get rid of social housing altogether in the medium-term, and drastically cut back on it in the immediate.

"Announcing details of the Comprehensive Spending Review, chancellor George Osborne said funding for social housing would be cut from £8.4 billion over the past three years to £4.4 billion over ( Read more... )

If I were Sarah Dunant's kids, I'd be rather embarrassed by this bit of high-flown projection. I certainly wouldn't appreciate the comparison to a Rottweiler ( Read more... )

After waking up before my alarm this morning, and being unable to get back to sleep, I managed to fall asleep again approximately 5 minutes after the alarm went off, and have only just woken back up ( Read more... )